It’s a 4amÂ infomercialÂ (so you know it’s good) that I use to see all of the time at work. Â I still can’t believe this shit is real…oh wait, yes I can. Â But yeah, that website is hilarious. Â I was cracking up. Â IÂ particularlyÂ enjoyed the sweaty boobs (because the days of perpetually sweaty boobs are upon me) and resting the girls on the table. Â Ah, good stuff.

My back seems to be settling a bit, thankfully. I heard that the news papers I work for will go from 19 to 9 editions (goodbye job) and I’m going to the hair dresser’s this afternoon (is barber only for men?) because my curls have gone haywire.

Don’t mind me. I’m just over here crying over the ending to season two of Buffy. No worries. *sniff* I mean, it’s not like I just had a fight with my mom and then watched that episode where her mom is an ass and shit. Ok, I’m bawling. Someone hand me a tissue. I’ll be fine. And then there was Angel. Her love. Gone. Why? Everything is shitty and nothing is right.

Oh goodness! I’ve been there before, as in, life mirroring art or art mirroring life and then the inevitable bawling. I have lots of tissues, though. I also have cheesecake, sponge cake and cheese scones. And tea! There must be tea! What’s your preference? I’ll go put the kettle on.

And between those shelter animal commercials and that song playing at the end of the finale episode? I’m convinced that it is Sarah McLachlan’s mission in this world to reduce us all to sobbing wrecks.

I cry every single time. Â I’m fairly certain I watched that episode at least twice a week over the summer between season 2 and 3 and cried every time then too. Â Sometimes when I need a good cry, I youtube that last scene and within 2 minutes I’m bawling.

So, found out what may have been the problem with my experiment. Now just have to be careful and re-do it. Also the project from my undergrad that I am presenting this summer is almost done…but we are running into a wall with the program it’s using because it’s not doing what I want it to do. I asked some people about it and what they told me to do would be a very long, time consuming process and I don’t want to do it. I think I would run out of time. Bleh.

Also, I just had a conversation with my SO about his family. So, background: a few weeks ago, my friend was visiting, my SO and his family showed up, I was happy because now both my friend and SO are here, and his family saw how happy I was. Tonight: my SO and I are talking and it comes out that his family sees me as being reserved, almost cold, around them (his exact words). So he asked me to try and show my happier side when I’m around them. It’s not that I dislike his family…but I am more reserved around them. I can’t explain why exactly, just that I am more cautious about what I say around them and I am stressed that my SO and his mom will get into an argument. So, I am more reserved around his family than I am around my friends. I mean it’s kind of obvious…they are not my friends, so I’m not going to be as happy around them as I am around my friends. Plus, I am more reserved around my own family too. I don’t know where this was going. I just don’t know what to do or how to act around them.

SO families are tough, I’m sure you’ll find the right balance with them. I personally think it’s better to start off too reserved rather than being too comfortable- you can always open up to people with time. I’ve dated people whose parents would have thought it disrespectful if I hadn’t been reserved around them, and I feel like that’s a worse impression than seeming a bit cold.

I’m just sitting at home waiting to hear the word that my little niece/nephew has been born safe and healthy. Who knew it’d be so stressful/exciting to sit and wait? Wish my brother would send more txts/updates. It’s been 24hrs since they went into the hospital. How long do these things take? She started having painful contractions late this afternoon apparently. *knows nothing, like Jon Snow*

You guyyyyyyyyyys I am a giant ball of anxiety.Â I have a poster to do for a conference that starts in a week and a half (and thus need to have the poster done in a week, so I have time to get it printed and whatnot), and it is so, so underwhelming.Â My supervisor is spectacularly unhelpful much of the time, I have no punchline to speak of because it’s still a work in progress (and I remain unconvinced that there is, in fact, a vaguely interesting punchline for this stage of these shenanigans, though I suspect the next stage of things will be more fruitful), and this is the first time I’m presenting my PhD work at a conference, and I am like a walking poster child for imposter syndrome.Â Even though I know I’m a walking poster child for imposter syndrome, I’m still all “I KNOW NOTHING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH” about it and my work is so disorganized and it’s not even that interesting at the stage and…… HALP.Â i have resorted to imbibing grapefruit juice and chocolate covered almonds in large quantities, and I’m not sure how much longer my innards will hold up for.

Your innards will hold up for as long as you need them to and then make you pay later. You can do it. When this happened to me (and it did, just for a masters instead of a PhD, so less pressure), I just started making the poster, knowing it wasn’t there yet. In doing so I found the answer and made a new, better poster.

Wow! Â Imposter syndrome is kind of cool! Â And the wiki for it is very short. Â So glad my laundry won’t just FINISH so that I could learn something from you tonight! Â I’m sure you’ll knock everyone’s socks off!

Dude, I feel like we are life experience twinsies right now. (I mean, aside from both being Canadian and awesome). I also have a conference coming up and due to some rather.. erm.. negative experiences this year, I am terrified. I Â also know that we will get through this, that dealing with feelings of being lost, or beingÂ impostors,Â or feeling like our research is not exciting is something that we can and need to figure out how to do. A friend of mine who recently has graduated Â had the same extremely demoralizing experience as me (having to rewrite a chunk of the candidacy exam due to what basically amounts to departmental politics) said it best “dealing with this prepared me for what academia is like.” I do think that while these experiences are demoralizing, isolating, and at times, awful, they do prepare you for a career in our field. I also think we both can make it through this. (And more than make it through it- in both cases we will be the person in the room who knows the most about our topic… that counts for a lot!)

I so feel you on Imposter Syndrome- the worst of it for me was all through last year and possibly up until fall semester (Oh, who am I kidding- Imposter Syndrome never really goes away!). But yeah, I just started preparing some data for a talk I’m going to give at a conference the first week of June and it’s starting to rear its ugly head again. Stupid advisor, telling me I should give a talk instead of a poster…. A talk means I have to speak in front of people with multiple slides that have to be interesting!! Crraaaaaapppp….

What has sometimes helped in the past with uninspiring posters or whatnot: save what you’ve been working on and then start a whole new one. Make it as ridiculous and amazing as possible- something that you would present to a bunch of third graders or drunk friends. It will let you a) be creative and work outside normal guidelines, b) relax and have fun with it, c) waste time, which was probably going to happen anyway, but it might get some ideas going about how to improve the actual poster.

GOOD LUCK! You are totally smart, know your stuff, and will kick ass at the conference.

So I paid actual money and joined match dot com. Gah, what a pile of losers. This one guy, under “things I like,” couldn’t think of anything he liked except TV shows!Â I suppose I should feel sorry for him, but it just pisses me off. I paid like a hundred dollars and I get religion, TV people, smokers — everything I said NO to.Â WTF?

In other news, the geese, newly free during the day, pooped all over the porch and ate one of my potted palms. Life is good.

Today was incredibly stressful for my entire family, but at the end of the day we pulled together a delish grocery-store roast chicken + side salads dinner and it was exactly what we needed. My mom had an endless conference in the city, my dad got stuck in an elevator, my sister had shenanigans sorting out her summer work and I was stuck in traffic for the better part of 2.5 hours, but yummy food and new episodes of our favourite TV? Mood = busted.

OH and I have some really exciting news- my boyfriend might have a full-time job for next year out in AB- he’s a teacher and we’ve waited 2 years for this! I might be moving to Alberta this summer! Nothing’s for sure yet so I can’t tell anyone but I HAD to tell the ladies of P-Mag.

tomorrow starts a whirlwind weekend of family and fun things, so I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off today. I now have groceries, the house is reasonably clean, and I think I’m ready for tomorrow. Whew. It feels good to sit down!

So my big cat, Loki, likes to attack my little cat, Mara, but she usually won’t put up with any of his bullshit. Once she’s chased him off he typically runs directly over to one of the scratchers and furiously takes hisÂ aggressionÂ out on it. I’ve started giving his rage a little inner monologue that goes, “THIS IS YOUR FACE! THIS IS YOUR FACE, MARA!” It always makes me laugh. This reminded me of that. I hope this makes sense.

This day has been…. less than stellar. I finally sat down with my fiance to tell him that I’m having some serious issues coming to grips with getting married in 3 1/2 months and that I’d really like to postpone it for a year. At least it didn’t go terribly- he’ll accept it, but he just doesn’t understand my concerns (and I’m terrible at articulating them). They seem to make so much sense when I’m thinking about them on my own, but then seem selfish when I try to talk about them, but then I can’t help but think that this is one time where it is TOTALLY okay to be selfish because it’s not like I’m getting married for anyone else but me, but…. And around and around I go in my head.

I suck at being a person some days.

Also- Help I’m Alive is one of my favorite songs and I’m so excited for Metric’s new album that just came out! Yay Canadian indie bands!

Maybe it would help if, one of the times you’re by yourself, you write down what you’re feeling? I’m wondering if, since you’re having a hard time expressing them, writing it alone so you don’t feel a huge pressure of having to say it to the person you love.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think this is a selfish thing, necessarily. And, even if it is, I think there’s a difference between simply acting with no regard to others and doing what feels right/necessary for you. If you’re really feeling that uncertain about it, you should probably listen to that and follow what you feel. Better listen to yourself than ignore it, go through with getting married, and then regret it!

Yeah, I’ve been thinking I need to grab a notebook to sort out my thoughts. But definitely agree that it’s better to listen to it than go through with it when I’m unsure and regret it later. And like I told Fiance: I’m not saying I don’t want to get married, I’m just saying I need more time.

Yeah, definitely. Don’t worry about being “selfish” about it. Sometimes people like to bandy about the word when you’re doing something you know you need to do for you, even though someone else doesn’t like it.

It is completely 100% okay to listen to yourself with this sort of thing!

Do NOT get married unless you are 110% on it. I have been married many times, and the very first time as I stood upstairs in the spare room and looked at myself in the mirror I said “Self, you could say NO. You could go down there and call this entire bullshit off.” but did I do that? No, I did not. What I did was, I chickened out on chickening out — and that made all the difference. So we had the shitty apartment, the dumb friends, the cheap beer, the crappy life, and the divorce. Stupid me. Avoid this if you can.

When it’s right you will not be able to conceive of another answer besides YES.

Thanks for this. I think I’ll stick up a post-it for when I’m preparing for my own impending doom marriage that says “Can you conceive of any answer besides YES?” (No but really we have good beer and amazing friends, so if those things are related to a happy marriage, I have high hopes.)

And really, that’s one of my biggest fears right there- that I’m going to let myself go through with this because it’s a good thing, even though I can completely conceive of other answers besides yes… But for a while, YES really was the only answer. I have a lot of stuff going on right now and am really good at psyching myself out about anything having to do with long term obligations/commitments. And maybe that’s part of the problem: in theory, marrying my guy is a great idea for all sorts of reason, but in practice, I can’t make that kind of a bargain.

I don’t think I quite agree with Jean. I never want to be in a relationship where the only way I can imagine my life going is marrying him. I prefer to think of it as: out of all the things I could do in my life, marrying him is what I really want and choose to do.

Well, that’s part of what I mean. “Can I really conceive of anything better than this, ever? If so, is it something feasible and obtainable? No, I’m not really ever going to marry David Duchovny? Okay then, marrying this guy is right and it’s what I want, because he makes me happy and it’s definitely a choice that seems right.”

Today was a long day. I showed up to campus two hours early to meet with a student who never showed, so I did some work and then proceeded to hang out with a colleague for a while. Then I worked a shitton on the paper I still haven’t written the draft for. I didn’t do any writing, but I finally sat down and did some of the research I’d been needing to do (I had been waiting for another classmate to send me some stuff, but he never did it).

As it turns out, doing that research gave me EXACTLY the breakthrough I’ve been needing, because I found an article that backs up everything I wanted to do.

I was fucking estactic. Really,Â I’m just elated that something has finally gone my way with that freaking paper!

Now to write the goddamn thing! And wait nervously to get a response back for the other paper’s draft.

Definitely. Thank god this wasn’t a group paper. I’ve had to do those before. More often than not, it is interminable.

What’s even better about it is, since this article I found was published LAST FUCKING YEAR, and the area is still very explorative and all that shit, this could actually be an Important Project if I wanted it to be! Like, actual freaking conference material.

For some reason, feeling excited about this makes me want to swear like a sailor. And I want to ride this high until I actually start doing it and it gets into rough patches again.

This week has gone by really fast for me. I’ve been up to my ears in work, which is always a nice way to be (provided you get meal/bathroom breaks). I’m working on a really nifty project that has allowed me the opportunity to show my worth and know-how.

Hasn’t left me much time to ponder how long the work week is, and for that, I’m always grateful. I hate being aware of how slowly time is passing!